Re:Teach Me PCB
by scld on Tuesday October 05, 2021 @10:40AM
(#28760125)
I use Altium Designer almost exclusively now (Was OrCAD/PADS previously)......if I were starting over, I'd get much more into KiCAD. Higher learning curve but you can get legitimate professional-grade PCBs designed in it.
The long-term answer is that you'll eventually want to try all of them. In my opinion, half of PCB layout is tool-agnostic and the other half is getting fast/proficient at a specific tool.
When I moved to Altium, I knew that I wanted to "pour copper" to make a power plane, so I just had to google what the Altium equivalent was. The PCB concepts of layers/routing/grounding/clearance/vias/stackups and all that are universal, the terminology and shortcuts are just changed between tools.
The long-term answer is that you'll eventually want to try all of them. In my opinion, half of PCB layout is tool-agnostic and the other half is getting fast/proficient at a specific tool.
When I moved to Altium, I knew that I wanted to "pour copper" to make a power plane, so I just had to google what the Altium equivalent was. The PCB concepts of layers/routing/grounding/clearance/vias/stackups and all that are universal, the terminology and shortcuts are just changed between tools.